One a day, plus iron

Second in a series of two, this is the NON-POND odonates. These are the dragonflies and damselflies that live in non-pond surroundings. They like creeks or swampy bits or whatever, just non-pond. If you want to see these guys, you are going to have to go where they live.

( Even more pictures of bugs! )

So I finally (in this era of covid, still) got a new camera to replace the canon powershot that was having lens opening issues. Hooray! I went out over the weekend to play odes with said camera.

( It is da bomb. )

I saw a Grey Petaltail eclosing over the weekend down by my swamp. (Seriously, it's my swamp. It's about three or four acres and it's on private property and I own the private property. Trust me when I say it's my swamp.) I took what shitty pictures I could with my phone (my real camera died, new one is en route from Amazon but cool stuff doesn't wait for the new camera to arrive, so... yeah) and posted them to the "odonate larvae and exuvia" facebook group. (Yes, that's a real facebook group. There are facebook groups for everything, including people who want to look at juvenile odes in their not-so-pretty aquatic forms.)

( Please, tell me more! This is fascinating, really. )

We've had a wet and cool spring, somewhat less than exciting on the odes front. But today, with a seventy-plus day and sun intermittently... it is odes season once again. So exciting!

( The odonatacentral website has changed... )

We're back at the Boots on the Ground problem for science. I've been on this before that species are not being observed and that our distribution and prevalence maps for stuff kind of suck. (No harm no foul to scientists out there doing the good work -- they can't be everywhere doing everything and there simply are not enough of them to cover the world in an odonate-centric sort of way.) And places like iNaturalist and odonatacentral.org try pretty hard to improve the record and produce up-to-date distribution maps. iNaturalist is citizen-verified, OC is verified by selected experts but both sites require a voucher specimen (typically a photograph) to prove that you saw what you say you saw.

I guess it's possible that some yahoo might submit photographs that aren't really stuff they actually saw but it takes a special kind of stupid to want to pretend to find odonates. I don't think people are actually doing that.

( Here's a cut before I go on endlessly about odes )

I keep going back and updating my list of ever-observed odes and that's tedious. It just is. And I'm thinking about what might be more useful than Just A List. I mean, an ever-observed-even-once list is more helpful than no list at all.

( But is that the only list that matters? )

Bluets are a genus-ish group of odonates. They're tiny and blue and they all look pretty much alike through my damn bifocals. I have mentioned previously that I need to do better at bluets and so I am trying to do better at bluets. But they're tiny and blue and they all look pretty much alike, hence my frustration.

( This post does not contain any pictures of bluets actually fucking. I had opportunities to take that picture today and I did not. )

Today, I saw a boatload of watersnakes. They're not poisonous or anything but they are kind of nasty and will bite at you if they feel cornered. Mostly they just startle me. But I saw, like, all of them today. Ugh. Not a huge fan of the startle.

( This post looks like it's not going to be about dragonflies. )

Odonata are more in need of warm sunshine than my endothermic pony, so I did odonata first. Couple of things out and about.

( We are into the image-heavy season, here. )

Yep, gonna talk about odes again. Sorry, folks. Area of enthusiasm. You know how it is.

( It is the middle of winter, can't you at least restrict this to summer? )